2015 November Coaching Report

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2015 November Coaching Report

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"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it” Albert Einstein

Just back from Barcelona, where the IOC co-hosted our first ever European Leadership Forum with the IESE business school in Spain. I had the honor of listening to four CEO’s share their biggest leadership challenges and relate how coaching has, at crucial moments, “woken them up” to see problems, even seeming disasters, in entirely new ways. It was a wonderful event — bringing C-suite leaders from across Europe into dialogue with leadership coaches from all over the world. For me, it was also a reminder of how blessed we are as coaches to have a job where one of our primary goals is to bring our clients—and ourselves—expanded awareness, to learn to “see through” life’s conundrums and forge new paths of possibility.

While in Barcelona, I also had the privilege of attending a seminar with two of our IOC Fellows, Jan Rybeck and Carylynn Larson, who shared a model for continuous improvement that they use in their coaching called, “Vertical Development”. Very rich and enlightening stuff — and lucky for us, they have agreed to offer an expanded version of this program to our members in this month's webinar.

So as we leap into fall, now may be a great time to ask yourself: are you living at your growing edge? Are you seeking opportunities to come together with other coaches to access new models, get feedback and learn from each other? As a member of the growing community of Affiliates and Fellows at the IOC, I’m thrilled to be part of a cadre of seekers who are always on the cusp of that new “level of consciousness” that Einstein recognized as the hallmark of human creativity and progress. We here at the IOC welcome your partnership — online, or on the ground—as we bring the gift of coaching to a world sorely in need of new ways of thinking—and being. If not us, then who? As another wise elder reminds us, "We are the ones we have been waiting for!”

Special thanks to Deb Elbaum, MD, CPCC, ACC for translating this article.

How important is it that business leaders have high emotional intelligence? How does a leader's emotional intelligence affect an employee's performance? Researchers Vidyarthi, Anand, and Liden examined these questions. Integrating emotional intelligence research with social exchange theory, they explored the relationship between a leader's emotion perception and employee job performance.

Emotion perception is defined as the ability to identify emotions in oneself and in others. People demonstrating high emotion perception express emotions appropriately, empathize well, and communicate with others in an emotionally appropriate way.

In the study, the authors gathered data using surveys from 391 male assembly-line workers and their 88 male managers in a multinational manufacturing organization. The managers were surveyed about their own emotion perception, their perception of the power distance in the organization (the extent to which individuals accept an unequal power distribution in an organization), and their employees' performance. The employees were surveyed about their perception of task interdependence (the degree to which individuals receive direct support from others to accomplish their work).

The authors hypothesized that higher emotion perception in leaders would correlate with better employee job performance. Further, they believed that this relationship would be affected by certain variables and be stronger when task interdependence is present and when leaders have a low power distance (the organization has a more egalitarian structure).

As hypothesized, the results did show that leaders' emotion perception was correlated with employee job performance. The higher the emotion perception in the leader, the higher the employee job performance. Managers' emotion perception accounted for about 24% of the variance in employee job performance. In addition, this relationship was stronger when communication was more frequent, power distance was lower, and the work structure was more interdependent.

This study underlines the importance of emotional intelligence in leaders in organizations for the bottom line of the company. The authors suggest that companies pay attention to this trait when hiring and invest in growing their leaders' emotional intelligence through training. As coaches, we can also have a positive impact by helping our clients who are leaders and managers build and strengthen their emotional intelligence.